d in the House, less than 40 of the 153 members voting aye. It
was not brought to a vote in the Senate.

In 1895 Senator Coon introduced the Township Bill again, but owing to
absentees it received only 23 votes, 26 being necessary to pass it.
Fearing that a majority of the members of the House were pledged to
vote for it, the chairman of the committee to which it was referred
made a sub-committee of three notorious opponents who took care that
it never was reported.

In 1897 Senator G. W. Monroe took charge of the State association's
measures. Bills for Township and Bond Suffrage, and for suffrage for
certain city, county and township officers and for Presidential
electors, were introduced by him but failed to pass.

In the special session of 1898 only such matters could be considered
as were named by Gov. John R. Tanner in calling it. The State
association petitioned him to include woman suffrage in the list, but
he did not grant the request. One of the subjects named was taxation.
The association prepared a bill to exempt the property of women from
taxation until they were allowed to vote. All the metropolitan papers
were interested in or amused by this bill, and gave it considerable
publicity, but it was not acted upon.

In 1899 the three bills championed by Senator Monroe in 1897 were
managed by Senator Isaac H. Hamilton. He forced two of them to a vote,
but neither received a majority.

During all this time Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, a practicing
lawyer of Chicago, auditor of the National Association and former
president of the State E. S. A., was the very efficient legislative
superintendent. She pressed the bills with a force which almost
brought success by its own momentum, and yet by her good judgment and
fair methods kept the respect of legislators who were bitterly opposed
to her measures.[240]

Sometimes the hearings on these bills occurred in the Senate Chamber
or the House of Representatives. One of the most noteworthy was in
1895, when about twenty women, representing many different localities,
societies and nationalities, made clever five-minute speeches.

The State association has sent the _Woman's Journal_, the _Woman's
Column_ and other suffrage literature to members of the Legislature
for months at a time. Petitions always have accompanied the bills.
Added to those presented in 1899 were resolutions adopted by various
Chicago labor organizations of men, representing a membership of
25,0